What's Here

Our Project Summary

Integrating Technology in the 1st-Year Seminar CSU Chico’s First-Year Seminar (FYS), UNIV 101, serves over 500 incoming students each year. This project will enhance student learning outcomes in the course by addressing the following issues:

• the use of inconsistent content and pedagogy across sections (currently 23; 25-30 sections planned for Fall 08);•
the lack of statistically significant gains in students’ understanding
of information literacy, which is one important component of the course
content;• the use of assignments which are disconnected from students’ lived experiences and real needs;• the lack of consistent quality in students’ introduction to and use of WebCT Vista;•
the failure to acknowledge what students know about technology and the
inability to engage them in meaningful conversations around the links
between technology and learning.

This project includes a series of developments that will address these problems through:•
creating a common WebCT Vista shell for all sections of the course, to
provide consistency and innovative pedagogy to support learning
communities within and across sections;• creation of an online
resource for the development of a common virtual text based on
authentic student experience, and the archiving of student work for
assessment purposes;• re-designing the information literacy
portion of the course to link instruction to meaningful student inquiry
projects focused on enhanced academic content of the course. In
addition, the librarian for the First Year Experience will deliver a
single large lecture to students in multiple sections which will be
integrated with small group meetings with student teams;•
exploration of students' use of mobile computer technology as important
arenas for learning and delivery of course content through the
TeachBack program.